Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Tygra in "The Stone Man From Space" (Standard; 1948)

Tygra of the Flame People ran as a back-up feature in
later issues of "Startling Comics" during the golden age. In
her origin story, Lynn Thomas was returning from a nearby village with an
experimental vitamin that was desperately needed to stem the tide of a plague,
when her airplane crashed during a thunderstorm. Inadvertently ingesting the
elixir to revitalize her diminished pep, Lynn
overheard a cry and rushed to the aid of a local tribesman under attack by a
lion, only to discover that she had become somewhat ferocious in battle
herself. In a genre-bending adventure that could easily have appeared in later
silver age anthology titles, "The Stone Man From Space" from Startling
Comics #53 (Sept.1948); originally published by Better/Standard/Nedor, was
written by Joe Greene and illustrated by Art Saaf. “Tygra” (as Lynn Thomas was
christened by the Flame People) and her paramour, Dr. Terry Winton also make
their final golden age appearance (this is the last issue of the series). The
Catacombs acknowledges "Comic Book Plus", an excellent source for
classic comics downloads [please go donate to their site], as the source
of these scans. Note: The copyright for this issue, its contents and artwork
belongs to the original publisher and/or the creators and is reproduced here
solely for entertainment purposes.Enjoy!

This is exactly why it always irked me when golden age jungle girls were saddled with regular male love interests. Those guys were always either wimps who needed rescuing or tough guys whose actions almost eclipsed the real star of the feature.

How it all began ....

In 1933, publishers at Eastern Color Press, intent to make better use of their printing equipment (which frequently sat idle between jobs), came up with the idea of printing an 8-page comic section that could be folded down from the large broadsheet to a smaller 9-inch by 12-inch format. The result was the first modern comic book. Containing reprints of newspaper comic strips, this experimental comic book titled "Funnies On Parade" was given away for free. It proved so popular that the following year Eastern published "Famous Funnies" and took the bold step of selling the comic for ten cents through chain stores. The enterprise was a smashing success and Eastern began churning out numerous reprints on a monthly basis. Other publishers, eager to get in on the profits, jumped on the bandwagon and the comic book industry was born!